Projects

Saturday, 4 January 2014

Conversation With A Egyptian Activist

...Do I
drive like Egyptian? Like I’m crazy? Like a step in front of me is a one-hit
death? Mashallah, (God has willed it) we speak collision. There is always
smoke curling from our engines, see the Souk? You call it market? Our
spices are the colours of eruption. That’s why Soldiers impose curfews from
streets, and we keep our fires in, house parties held behind every door, these were
nights of hashish and tipsy-talk, but my friend, no Champagne leaves our
shelves with the military barb wiring our roads, you’d have to load your tongue
with Arabic to skin scrape our red African revolution. Change is the slowest
train you can catch in Egypt, we’ve lost blood and patience waiting for it...

Raymond Antrobus Bio

Raymond Antrobus is a poet and former lead educator on the Spoken Word Education MA Programme at Goldsmiths University. Currently he is a one of the London Laureates. Born and bred in Hackney, he is also co-curator of popular London poetry events Chill Pill (Soho Theatre and The Albany) and Keats House Poets Forum. Raymond’s work has appeared on BBC Radio 4, The Big Issue, The Guardian and at TedxEastEnd. As well as respected literary journals such as The Rialto, Magma, Oxford University Diaspora's Programme and Alaska University Press. Sky Arts and Ideas Tap listed Raymond in the top 20 promising young artists in the UK. His second collection - Shapes & Disfigurements Of Raymond Antrobus - is published by Burning Eye Books.
“His monologues are stunning studies of voice and substance, and his lyric poems are graceful and finely crafted” - Kwame Dawes
“Raymond uses nostalgia for a place and a time, but resists sentimentality completely. He makes the reader/listener experience the moment with all the senses and very skilfully sets that up against a harsher reality” – Imtiaz Dharker